Hot music/Arab women
Two YouTube videos from the Eygpt Blog: Natacha Atlas, the wonderful Jewish/Maghrebi/Belgian singer, and Lebanese Nicole Saba, who makes rather cheesy Euro-pop in Arabic, but in this video rather bravely takes on the issue of domestic violence and police brutality (I think).
Comments
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natacha_Atlas
I started to turn against her, despite her wonderful music, when I read an "Invisible Jukebox" feature in the music magazine Wire and heard a "Radio Ping Pong" interview she did with the great Charlie Gillet. In both, she demonstrated a kind of closed-mindedness that suprised me. She seemed to be articulating a kind of Pan-Arabic nationalist position that I thought at odds with her very hybrid music. I can't remember exactly, but I have a feeling that there was a kind of anti-Zionist/anti-Western anger in the two interviews that disturbed me a bit.
I saw her live once, at some crusty festival, with the rapper JC001 - it was pretty good.
http://roughinhere.wordpress.com/2007/10/06/heres-another-natacha-atlas-video-to-replace-the-ones-that-disappeared/
The sentiments of the song he refers to seem pretty sound.
By the way, somebody told me that members of Transglobal Underground used to live in New Cross in Sandford housing co-op, wonder if this is true?